After market vehicle equipment, vehicle insurance, and other vehicle-related services are usually sought out by vehicle owners interested in such products. The owner must research the specific costs related to such products and choose the products based on their driving needs. Insurance costs are generally a result of the characteristics of a vehicle, the vehicle's drivers and their driving histories. Prices for insurance products are usually sold on a yearly basis and are determined by a profile of the drivers, their driving records, and characteristics of the vehicle at the time that the policy is purchased. Prices are a function of the drivers' genders and ages, where they live, work, and park the vehicle and the number of miles the vehicle is driven on a daily basis. All of these factors contribute to the calculation of an insurance rate for a yearly term. In most cases, the rates are not variable for changes in these conditions during the year term of the policy.
It is also a common practice for insurance companies to offer discounts on vehicle insurance premiums for a vehicle which has optional factory-installed or after market products that are believed to promote safer operation of the vehicle and/or offer greater protection for the driver and other vehicle occupants, or even the vehicle itself. Examples of such products are ABS brakes, which are believed to reduce the number and severity of accidents, and vehicle security systems, which reduce the potential for vehicle theft. In the cases of such products, the presence of the product, once properly-installed on the vehicle, is generally enough evidence to support that it will function to provide the added benefits which warrant the discount offered in vehicle insurance premiums.
Recently, some products have been introduced for vehicles, and others are being prepared for introduction, which promote safer vehicle operation, but which can be utilized at the driver's discretion. These types of products offer significant potential for improving safety, but since there is no prior knowledge or assurance of how much such products will be utilized, it is difficult to justify offering vehicle insurance premium reductions for their purchase. Examples of such products already introduced into the market are navigation systems, heavy-vehicle forward collision warning systems, and heavy-vehicle lane-change collision warning systems. Other products announced for market introduction are heavy-vehicle lane-departure warning systems, and being prepared for heavy-vehicle product introduction are drowsy- and/or inattentive-driver monitoring systems. For various reasons, such products are often introduced first for heavy vehicles for commercial use, but are expected to be also offered later for light vehicles for commercial and personal use.
As such safety-related products only function at the driver's discretion, the utilization is difficult to assess. Attempts to account for this problem have been set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,797,134 and 6,064,970, entitled “Motor Vehicle Monitoring System for Determining a Cost of Insurance”. The inventions taught by these two patents provide for capturing data relating to vehicle operations and using such data to determine the appropriate vehicle insurance premium.
A problem with such an operation is found in the requirement to have the relevant data captured and reported to the insurance company's central computers. There are concerns about potential loss of privacy due to having such data captured and communicated to another party. A further problem can exist if the owner decides not to surrender that type of information from time to time, or if other people are allowed to drive his vehicle who might object to having otherwise-private information about their location and driving habits captured and transmitted to the insurance company.
In other developments relevant to the current invention, a number of insurance companies have developed Internet web sites through which consumers can provide relevant information and receive quotes for insurance policies, including automotive insurance. According to the story “Not the Agents of Change” on page 225 of the Jun. 13, 2000 issue of the magazine “Business 2.0”, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company launched the first auto insurance company Website in mid 1997, and at present is receiving 630,000 unique visitors nationwide. In addition to the traditional vehicle insurers utilizing traditional agents that are now beginning to also market their products through their own web sites, at least one company has been formed without traditional agents to market its own insurance products exclusively through its Internet web site eCoverage.com (ecoverage P&C Insurance Services, Inc.).
There are now also a number of electronic marketplaces accessible as web pages through the Internet, some of which allow consumers to comparison-shop for various products and services offered to them by businesses, sometimes called “consumer-to-business” or C2B sites, since it is the consumer who takes the initiative to utilize such sites to evaluate alternative business products. The attraction of a C2B marketplace to many consumers, compared with Internet web sites belonging to a single business, is the availability of alternatives from a central, presumably neutral, source. Various protections are claimed for protecting the privacy of information provided by the consumer in order to receive an analysis of suitable alternative product or service choices.
Some existing C2B sites offer insurance products, including automotive insurance. Based on information supplied on-line by the consumer on his and other intended drivers' profiles, driving records, and vehicles to be covered, comparisons are generally made between alternative companies' vehicle insurance policies and an analysis is provided on-line to the consumer. In some cases the consumer can choose to purchase a desired insurance policy through the C2B site, and in other cases either is directed to contact an appropriate agent or has the necessary information forwarded to an agent, who in turn contacts the consumer to arrange the sale. Examples of such C2B sites offering automotive insurance and their owners are InsureMarket.com (Intuit Inc.'s Quicken Insurance site), InsWeb.com (InsWeb Corporation), Einsure.com (E-INSURE Services, Inc.), and IAC.com (Insurance Answer Center, Inc.).
At present, even considering the existing methods and systems art, a problem remains in providing automotive insurance with premiums based in part on vehicle-operation related data captured by systems on the vehicle. A vehicle's owner currently has no convenient way of selectively capturing data relating to operation of their vehicle, to identify potential savings in vehicle insurance premiums. This is a smaller problem for premiums based solely on vehicle usage, since most drivers can estimate how much a vehicle is driven, where it is generally driven, and at what times. Such information can be provided via a web site or to a traditional agent, and estimated premiums calculated. However, the potential exists for premiums to also be based on the way the car is driven, both in absolute terms (frequency of hard-braking ABS events, high accelerations, sudden swerves, etc.) and relative to other vehicles (tailgating, high-speed approaches to other vehicles), relative to the roadway (difficulty staying within lane), and/or the driver's ability to stay alert and attentive to the driving task. These types of information are easily identified and can be captured from existing ABS systems, collision warning systems, lane-keeping and road-departure warning systems, drowsy- and/or inattentive-driver monitoring systems, and the like, but such data are not generally available directly to the vehicle owner. Further, the owner's or other driver's ability to estimate such data accurately is very unlikely. For these reasons, the present art does not provide a convenient approach for capturing such relevant data and providing the vehicle owner with vehicle insurance alternatives based on the current vehicle's configuration. Likewise, the present art does not provide a convenient approach for providing the vehicle owner with vehicle insurance alternatives based on the addition of various after market vehicle products capable of capturing vehicle-operation related information which may be reported to an insurance company for vehicle insurance premium discounts.
Similarly, in other environments, such as the home or place of business, it would be advantageous to provide the ability to monitor the user or environment to allow the capture of data, which can be communicated to an electronic marketplace to calculate the cost of related products or services to the user within such an environment.